By Ben Knight, Clay Hichens, and Elise Worthington
Across Australia, desperate parents are re-mortgaging homes, taking out loans, or pulling out their superannuation to rescue their children from ice addiction.
Key points:
- Shortage of public rehab centres mean families are driven to private centres
- Private clinics often charge tens of thousands of dollars
- Experts fear private clinics have ‘no minimum standards’
For the Butters family of Bacchus Marsh, the choice was stark: come up with thousands of dollars to book their daughter into private rehab, or see her slide back into a cycle of addiction, which had seen her drifting from one dealer’s house to another.
Tiarni Butters, 19, told Four Corners that it was a drive-by shooting that made her decide it was time to go back home to her parents and get off ice.
“There was five bullets through the front window. That’s what made me switch on straight away that this is enough — like, I could have got shot right there and then. It’s ridiculous,” she said.
Four Corners spent the day with the Butters, filming as the biggest crisis of their lives came to a head.
For eight months, Tiarni had been moving between ice dealers’ houses in Melbourne, having left her first full-time job as a dental nurse.
“Every day it was like a party … drugs were always there. There was always someone there, up to like 10 people at the one house,” she said.
It was a total shock to her family. Her father Wayne stopped work to search for her; chasing leads gleaned from Facebook to the doors of drug houses across Melbourne.
“They have got steel doors. They don’t have to answer them if they don’t want to. I just put my hoodie over my head, knocked on the door … they must have thought it was just a drug deal, so the door opened,” he said.
Top Comments
Time for reform. Proper reform that sees pusher and manufacturers punished, government regulation of substances and drug addicts treated for what they are: sick. All the current system does is punish those who need help and make criminal rich. Oh, and at a huge cost to the taxpayer, who is funding the incarceration of broken, sick people.
Portugal has it right. We should be following Portugal's example.
Yes yes and yes. The "War on Drugs" has failed. It is disgusting how many billions and trillions are spent on failed policy globally. There has to be a better way.
Along with decriminalisation, they have a free public health system that subsidises rehab and has intervention and counselling programs also subsidised. Saying we should follow this program is expecting the public health system to foot the bill.
But you use the money that would go into the justice system locking these people away, plus if the government really wanted to fix things, it would produce the drugs themselves, safely, and charge a tax that would also go towards funding rehab. The program in Portugal is a success, so I don't I'm not sure what your problem is?
Not every single drug user is locked away. Most hard drugs are imported. I can't for the life of me see the production of methamphetamine and heroin produced by the government being sanctioned by the people of this country.
There is nothing good about ice, such an evil, insidious drug.
We have friends, in their 60s, were hoping to retire but are now remortgaging their house as well as raising their son's son, and the little boy's half-sister (because the alternative is they live in a drug infested commune with their addicted mother) to get their own son (a former sports champion) into another rehab. The dealers and ice cooks and importers need to be locked up and the key thrown away. It is decimating families and communities.
having children is a lifelong commitment. noone asks to be born, it is their responsibility to make sure what they birthed is ok.
That is what my friends are doing, so not sure why you think I don't think that?
I think these people are heroes, TwinMama. So sad that this is what they have to go through, however, to save their son.
Nope you get to a certain age you have to take responsibility for your actions.What happens if she relapses and mum and Dad don't have the readies to help her again. Having said that I do know a man whose son was on herein, went to jail but got clean. Trouble was when he got out of jail and moved back home, his former suppliers and deadbeat drugs mates tried to contact him with the view to getting him back on the gear. His dad made it known that if that happened that person would be shot. Calls and mates stopped trying to contact his son. I think I would do the same